Displaying & Regulating the Misunderstood Commercial Sign
Is it also the most misunderstood, disparaged, and overregulated part of our urban and suburban environments?
John Gann says that both sign makers and planners need better information.
Almost uniquely, his manual, Selling on the Street: Signs, Marketing, & Regulation, was not funded and is not sponsored by either sign or planning advocacy organizations. It talks about the important marketing function of commercial signs and the effects of government regulation.
New Things You'll Know
* How signs are superior to other marketing media.
* How the most important experts in the use of signs have been the most overlooked in discussions of the functions and regulation of signage
* Why sign regulation is not and can never be scientific
* How architects see buildings and their signs differently than customers
* The advantages of complete content neutrality
* How the work of multiple researchers cited to support strict sign regulations has been misrepresented
* How tomorrow (and in some places today) the sign may be the store
* How important one kind of underestimated sign is to downtown areas
* Why changeable copy may be the most critical part of any commercial sign display
* How wall signs can be made much more visaible without making them bigger
* The shortcomings of highway visibility studies
* Why model codes and real codes are very different
* The changing treatment of "items of information" control
* Why to avoid overregulation of temporary signs
* How regulations hurt small independent businesses
* What sign users should put on changeable copy panels
* Where the highly publicized and often revised "Street Graphics" control scheme goes wrong